Village on hill terrain tile tutorial

Eventually I have the time to wright this tutorial up. Like an idiot I forgot to get photos of the initial stages, luckily I have a link to a tutorial that allowed me to make this piece. lead adventure forum tutorial

Supplies can be bought from the folling places
deluxe materials for the glue and water products.
antenocitis workshop for everything else (you can get the water products from Ged but not the resin in the quantity I need)

I started off by rough;y sketching out ideas on the set up of this tile bearing in mind that the path needed to be in the center of the tile so that it would match up with the first one I made forest terrain tile
This is very important if you want to have tiles that can be put together for larger encounters/skirmishes.

Once the sketches were finished I marked out on the first piece of blue foam (extruded styrene) with a pencil where the hills would go and where the path would run (the pencil will leave an indentation in the foam so is also good if you want to make a cobbled path for example.)

Once this was done I then started to cut out the hills using a hot wire cutter (I use the woodland scenics one as it is very affordable and easy to use/maintain.)  One thing I did bear in mind whilst cutting the hills was that miniatures had to stand on the slopes and that some smoothing would be done with wall/crack filler so the hills didn't need to be perfect, just near enough.

The rocks were made from pieces of cork bark, cut roughly into the shapes I needed with a standard saw (no need for expensive tools, just the correct ones :)
The hills were then glued into place using deluxe materials foam to foam glue followed by the cork bark (rocks) and left to set (it takes roughly an hour to fully cure)

Once the glue was cured I started to carve out the stream using a hand drill (sanding attachment) which is far quicker and more accurate than cutting by hand or sanding (but damn messy!)
After this (and cleaning up the mess) I mixed up the wall/crack filler (the dry powder is far cheaper than the ready mixed, why pay premium prices for someone else to add water!) and started to finish off the hills.
Just mix the filler untill it has the consistency of a thick porridge (one that a spoon won't stand up in!) and use a spatula to put in place, smooth it out before it cures with the spatula (just wet the spatual first) and then wait for it to cure.
I also smoothed out the river/stream bed as well with the excess I had mixed)
Once cured use some sand paper to smooth out and large bumps etc.
(the small pieces of slate in the river bed are to indicate a ford)

Now that that part is done I painted the relevant parts the appropriate colour using cheap craft paint, this ensures that any part that doesn't get completely covered by foam, grass etc won't have bits of blue showing through (a very easy way for a lot of work to be ruined just for the sake of skipping ten minutes of work!)

The rocks were base coated with a black craft paint and then had vallejo model colour silver grey (thinned own) painted over (two coats.)

As you can see it now looks like a cheap plastic childrens toy!  don't dispare though as woodland scenics and nock will come to the rescue.

Once the paint was dry I glued into place the resin pieces I had previously painted (using the foam to foam glue)  Remember to put the pieces in place first and then one piece at a time remove and glue, this will ensure your village etc will not only fit but will be how you want it to be (yet again another ten minute job that will pay big dividends in the long run, or as carpenters say, measure twice cut once.)

Make sure that models have enough room to move around the parts you wish the to be able to move in.

Getafix from the old metal magic company (painted by my friend John Mooney) aided me in this task.

Next up was to get the main part of the rocks out of the way.  This was done in the same manner as the rock tutorial here (obviously the base coat has already been done so no nead to base coat it in ivory as in that turorial.)

The next stage was to start the ground work, for this I used woodland scenics fine turf, grass and earth for the grass areas.

Leave the paths clear at this stage.

Just paint on pva and then sprinkle on the fine turf, once dry turn the board on it's side and gently shake free any loose turf (collect this turf as it can be reused, waste not want not.)

Then mix up a scenic cement mix (highly diluted pva and water mix) and spray all over the turf, this will ensure it is firmly fixed in place and will stand up to gaming. (have the spray bottle set to spray and not jet! and clean the nozzle by squirting pure water through it as soon as you are finished other wise the glue will block up the nozzle.)

Once the pva scenic cement mix is dry use masking tape to cover the paths (this is to ensure that any where you don't want the grass you will not have any, with hindsight I would have convered the buildings and wattle fences as well as getting the grass of them took along time!) as they may not have anything on them but the scenic cement mix will have left them ever so slightly tacky (even if left for twenty four hours!)

Next is the grass.

In this step I used a very cool piece of equipment known as the grass tech II (static flock applicator)  Noch produces one as well, more expensive with different attachment as well but at half the price the grass tech does what I require of it (their are tutorials on the net on how to make them yourself.)

Antoniciti (Ged and Nadine sell it)  Grass tech flock applicator

Simply load up the hopper, attach the crocodile clip to the glue (I attach it to a small nail and just place that where I need it as it doesn't then leave a mark or a hole) and start to sprinkle, for thicker areas of grass just sprinkle for longer over that spot. For different heights of grass just sprinkle thinly and then load the hopper with the different height of grass and then sprinkle in the same area (same with different coloured grass as well.)

Here is a youtube vid of it in action 

I just use a paint brush to apply the glue as using your finger on top of the fine flock isn't practical.

Once done allow to dry and then vac up the loose grass (place an old sock over the nozzle, in my case I placed it in the tube and trapped it in place with the fine nozzle thus allowing me to reclaim the grass and put it back in the tub to be reused again.

Then apply glue to your paths etc and flock them with the earth fine turf.

Once dry scatter bits of course turf into places where you want weeds etc to be growing and then blast the lot with the scenic cement mix and allow to dry (this may flatten some areas of grass, don't worry this just makes it look like it has been trampled down and more natural.)

The next stage is to apply dry pigment powder to the paths (I use mig pigments) and river bed then seal with a fixer (in my case I use lighter fluid, just load the fixer onto a brush and gently touch the dry pigment powder.)

Now we are onto the water stage :D   Making sure to seal the edges of the board (the two ends of the river/large stream) I used clear plastic (the backs of warlord games blister packs cut to size) and glued it in place with foam to foam glue.

If you wanted to remove the barrier/seal afterwards for example of you were having the stream run through a couple of board sections then you could seal it with brown tape, then use a two part epoxy glue (that dries clear) to ensure the seal is good. once cured cover the inside of the brown tape with liquid vaseline (otherwise you will end up with lots of air bubbles where the resin has touched the tape.)

Once the barrier is in place mix up your clear resin (usually two parts resin to one part hardener) and start to pour. I would advise on doing the pour in a couple of stages, first stage just a thin covering of the river bed. This will allow you to make sure your seals are good enough, if not you will only have a small amount of resin to clean up.

Let each pour cure before doing the next (I did this board in two pours.)

My apologies for the poor quality photograph (the sunlight was that bright the blind would not stop it coming through and everything has an orangy brown glow because of it!)

Once the resin is cured we now need to make the water look like it is actually flowing.

For this I used deluxe materials making waves, it is extremely thick, thicker than you would imagine. It is designed to be stippled into place.

Put a little onto the end of a flat brush and stipple, do a little area at a time (I worked in one inch areas.)

It will dry clear and it will dry matt.

Just build up the layers where you want the ripples etc to be.

As you can see I started off with a general covering and then built it up in the center with a few more layers.

I then gave it all a coat of acrylic gloss varnish (vallejo model colour) to get rid of the matt finish (water is reflective) 

Then to add the little bits of water that that appear almost white and foamy when flowing over rocks etc I mixed a little white into the making waves (one part white to two parts making waves) and stippled it into areas that I wanted to give the appearance of rocks below the surface (not too much, less is more.)

The ford area had more applied to draw attention to it (as it means the water isn't as deep their.)

Once dry I gave the white foam parts a liitle stipple of pure making waves just to add a clear surface to it and take away the white painted look.

And that's it!

To cover up the blue foam from the edges of the boards I simply used gaffa tape as it adds a little strength to avoid damage from knocks and looks neater than blue foam or matt paint that slowly shows blue as it gets bashed about through plenty of use.

Here is the finished tile and some close up shots.

(the hay is noch wild grass beige)